- “… Zhipeng guided me to refine broad interests into precise research questions while never narrowing the scope prematurely… Whether we were refining research questions, discussing methodological choices, or wrestling with how to interpret what I was hearing in the field, he always knew how to prompt my thinking by asking the exact questions. Between meetings, he gave me a simple task to think about, write, or complete to help me stay on course.”
- “During the design phase, he helped me think through a range of methodological approaches, strategies for handling a diverse participant pool, and ways to identify which patterns I should follow up on … helped me design interview questions that prompted responses about documentable behaviors rather than just opinions … As I conduct the fieldwork, he helped me identify the emerging patterns. For example, we realized it would be useful to use a paired research design that looked at both foreign domestic workers and their employers to understand how behaviors and attachments are interpreted and affected by both sides. As my data grew to over thirty transcripts, he helped me navigate the transition from data collection to analysis, offering concrete advice on which patterns were analytically meaningful and how to approach transcript analysis in a structured, manageable way.”
- “Through this experience, I came to understand how rigorous social science research can reveal the social foundations of phenomena that may initially appear individual in nature—what I first approached as questions about personal relationships and psychological dynamics between foreign domestic workers and expatriate families…”